Currently, emerging market shares and bond prices are generally experiencing increased volatility and falling prices. Although this is a direct result of tapering by the US Federal Reserve, it is also a healthy sign markets are starting to focus on investment fundamentals – and measured by these standards, many emerging markets don’t pass muster.

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Yesterday we released our Australian ETF Review for January 2014, which reported that, for the first time in 20 months, the Australian ETF Industry declined, finishing the month with  $9.8B in funds under management. Interestingly, though, the industry actually grew 1.2% by units with ~$150m of new money inflows this month.

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One of the issues a number of Australian investors are considering at the moment is how to efficiently and effectively invest in our share market at a time when many companies’ share prices are at near-record highs. For example, “income stocks” like CBA are highly sought after by investors both in Australia and offshore,

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The GFC revealed the heavy asset allocation biases of many Australians who sustained heavy losses due to high allocations to (primarily domestic) equities. The events of the GFC led many Australians to look for a more conservative approach to investing. One such approach is to build a “balanced” portfolio, with allocations not only to equities,

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In this BetaShares Academy post we look at one of the most misunderstood concepts relating to ETFs – liquidity. To understand ETF liquidity, we need to dig into the concept of an “open ended” fund – and when we do, it becomes obvious why ETFs are typically described as having the same level of liquidity as the underlying assets of the fund.

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We recently released our 2013 year-end Australian ETF Review which provides further detail and statistics around the tremendous growth we experienced in our industry last year. 2013 was a hallmark year for the ETF industry, recording its highest ever growth in FuM of $3.5B, and reaching a record high of $10B.

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Today we released our Australian ETF Review for November 2013, which reported that the Australian ETF Industry grew for the 18th consecutive month in a row, reaching a fresh record high of $9.6B in funds under management. ETF industry assets grew 3.2% ($297 million) in November with the bulk of the growth ($210 million) attributable to new money rather than market performance.

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Taxes are one of the biggest costs to investors, and small changes in tax bills over an investment lifetime can make large differences to the final value of the investment portfolio. ETFs as an investment vehicle typically have a relatively high level of tax efficiency when compared to traditional actively managed funds –

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This is the first of a series of posts in the “BetaShares Academy“, which we will add to over time. The aim of the BetaShares Academy is to provide educational information on ETFs, their structure and key features – the ‘basics of ETFs’. In this particular post, we focus on the way in which ETFs are ‘created’

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The financial news cycle has been churning between boom and bust stories since the onset of the GFC. Calls to be on the lookout for economic ‘green shoots’ coincided with Warren Buffet’s sagacious call to buy shares at the bottom of the cycle and not to “wait for the robins to sing – by then,

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